


The Endless Sea

by imaginary_golux



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 10:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13739274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Chihiro ends up back in the spirit world...but that might not be such a bad thing.Beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	The Endless Sea

Chihiro isn’t sure how she ended up in the spirit world this time. She doesn’t _think_ she walked through any particularly odd doorways, and she certainly didn’t _deliberately_ do anything foolish enough to get her trapped here. She kind of wishes she _had_ , because then she’d know how to get back. But she’s here, on this endless sea, sitting on this tiny island with nothing but driftwood to keep her company, and if she doesn’t want to starve she’ll need to do _something_.

She’s not a child anymore. She still has Grandmother Zeniba’s hairband tying back her hair, but she’s not ten, and she’s learned a fair number of useful things over the years since she was last in the spirit world. One of them is improvising. She’s on an island with no food or water - beside the endless spirit sea - well then, time to build a raft.

She makes a sort of rope out of seaweed, and lashes the driftwood together, and chooses a particularly straight piece to be her paddle. There’s no moon or stars, here in the spirit world, and even if there were she wouldn’t know which direction leads towards _people_ , so she picks one at random and sculls slowly that way, scanning the horizon for _anything_.

What she sees, eventually, is a tall ship coming towards her, with huge square sails billowing in a breeze she cannot feel. She stands up on her raft, carefully, and waves, calling, “Hello? Can you help me?”

The ship slows, turns - Chihiro is fairly sure real ships don’t turn that easily - and drifts to a halt alongside her raft, and a rope ladder unrolls down its side. Chihiro shrugs and clambers up, leaving her raft behind.

There’s no one on the deck, but as soon as she’s properly aboard, the sails billow again and the ship is off, sliding through the water almost soundlessly.

Chihiro looks around: up at the rigging, down along the deck, up at the wheel. There is no one at all. Possibly this is simply because she hasn’t eaten anything in the spirit world yet - surely the food she ate ten years ago has worn off by now - and the ship is _actually_ full of spirits. Or possibly it isn’t.

She stands at the rail, watching the raft slip away behind the ship, until she can’t see it anymore, and then she takes a deep breath and walks - slowly and carefully, so if there _are_ spirits aboard they can see her coming and get out of the way - towards the captain’s cabin beneath the wheel.

She knocks on the door, feeling rather like she’s done this before - but whoever is behind this door is almost certainly not Yubaba. She really can’t imagine Grandmother Yubaba ever leaving her bathhouse. She’s briefly amused by the thought that it might be Boh, all grown up and choosing to be a pirate rather than working at the bathhouse -

And the door swings open to reveal a very startled Haku.

“Chihiro!” he says. “I didn’t realize - I’m so sorry, I didn’t know it was _you_ I’d picked up!”

“Haku!” Chihiro says, and flings her arms around him. He seems to have aged at about the same rate she has, and looks to be in his mid-twenties now, though of course as a river god he could be any age at all. “Oh, Haku, I’ve missed you!”

He hugs her back enthusiastically. “I’ve missed you, too, Chihiro,” he says. “Come in! Are you hungry?”

He brings her pickled plums and rice balls and steamed fish, and they eat together in silence except for the joyful laughter neither of them can suppress whenever they meet each other’s eyes. When the meal is over, Haku rises and offers her his hand. “Would you like to see my ship, Chihiro?”

“I would,” she says, taking it, and they go out onto the deck together. The ship is _still_ empty, though the wheel turns and the ropes adjust themselves. “Do you have no crew?”

“It’s surprisingly hard to find a crew willing to follow a river god with no river,” Haku says, a tiny twist to his lips that might be a smile or a wry grimace. “Lin is here, actually. She’s my cook. But other than that, it’s just me.”

“What do you _do_ , with a ship like this?” Chihiro asks, running a hand over the beautifully-polished railing.

“Well,” Haku says, shrugging, “Mostly I sail about and look at things, meet people, see where I can help. Though a lot of spirits seem to think I’m a pirate, which does make helping a little harder. I go see Zeniba every so often, and No-Face. They’re doing well.”

Chihiro laughs. “It is a rather piratical ship,” she points out.

“I suppose it is,” Haku says, grinning properly now. “And technically I did steal it.”

“Pirate,” Chihiro teases.

“And would you like to stay and be a pirate with me, then?” Haku asks. “Or shall I bring you home?”

Chihiro considers that. She...really doesn’t _fit_ in the human world, it sometimes seems. Defeating a witch and freeing a river spirit at the age of ten has lasting effects. And she has missed Haku desperately - and Lin, and No-Face, and Grandmother Zeniba, and Boh - and she doesn’t have a job lined up, or a boyfriend, or really...anything to hold her to the human world, except her parents, and they think she’s off on a summer backpacking trip around Japan.

“I don’t know if I can stay forever,” she says, “but I’d like to stay a while.”

“Then be welcome for as long as you like,” Haku says, smile going soft and warm, and Chihiro takes his hand and smiles back, feeling like she is, for the first time in a very long time, exactly where she’s meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 19 of the February Ficlet Challenge.
> 
> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr.


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